


Truths and Lies in Parallel

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-25
Updated: 2010-10-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that they leave things out. The lawyers just don't ask all of the right questions, and anyway these parts only mattered/matter/will matter to the two of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truths and Lies in Parallel

Eduardo was always the one who thought about body-language, and eye-contact, and all of that crap. Mark still sometimes hears Eduardo's voice in his head when he's preparing for meetings (shake hands – _hold_ – let go – smile). Mark had always hated that and now he mostly doesn't need to care. But Eduardo does. So Mark knows that he's aware of what he's doing here. Sitting side-on and looking at the lawyer, and eventually turning his back on the rest of them altogether. Unless he wants to make a point, really stick the knife in. Then he looks straight at Mark.

Someone asks him afterwards - after he's signing the settlement, the last settlement with Eduardo - how he feels.

"I don't know. I didn't… I didn't remember it like that."

"No one ever does. Which part?"

"Any of it," Mark says. "I didn't remember it being like that."

 

*

He had kissed Mark in the snow. It was Boston, and it was snowing, and Mark had his shoulders hunched up like the world might be ending. Eduardo wrapped his arm around Mark's shoulders and leaned in close enough to brush his lips against Mark's cheek. "We'll fix it. Stop worrying."

"I can't stop worrying," Mark had said, ignoring or not noticing the increased contact. "I'm paranoid and neurotic and incapable of maintaining normal human relationships, remember?"

None of this was quite a lie but Eduardo frowned. "Aren't those two words that mean the same thing anyway?"

Mark pulled back to look at him. "No, not really." He said, without changing tone, "It's sweet that you're concerned."

"Because we both know that you're all about sweet."

Mark smiled, a sharp flash across his face. "I've got you for sweet." He kissed Eduardo, close to the lips but not quite. "I have an idea. Coming?"

 

*

It's sort of fucked up that they didn't have sex until after they hated each other. Or claimed to hate each other. Anyway it's fucked up and Mark knows this. Doesn't mean it didn't happen.

He had gone to New York after Sean called from the police station, after Eduardo smashed up a computer in front of him and everything that had seemed like a good idea two days ago suddenly wasn't.

He might even – he still thinks about this sometimes – might even have said sorry, if Eduardo hadn't answered the door with a smile. If he had looked as wrecked as Mark felt, maybe they could have fixed all this.

But Eduardo was smiling until he realised who it was, and it twisted something inside Mark. He's not a bad person, he doesn't think, but he's not a good one either. He wanted Eduardo to care about this. They'll accuse Mark later of not caring, but Eduardo pulled away first. He cancelled the account, he risked everything they had built - he could have pulled the whole company down around them. Mark needed to protect it because no one else could. He thought Eduardo would understand that.

Eduardo kept his hand on the door. "Mark."

"Apparently you're going to sue me."

"Apparently?" Eduardo asked. "I told you that in the office, it's not a secret. You didn't need to come all the way here to ask me if it was true."

"My lawyer called me."

There was a pause. "Yes," Eduardo said. "I'm going to sue you." He leant back, just a little.

Mark pushed him into the room. Eduardo resisted badly, curling his leg around Mark's leg and tripping them towards the bed.

It hurt: Eduardo's elbow caught Mark in the chest and he didn't apologise. Mark bit Eduardo's neck and Eduardo said, "You think that's a good idea right now?" He shoved Mark back, his hand close to Mark's throat.

"Are you querying the kissing or the teeth?"

Eduardo turned them around on the bed, rolling Mark underneath him. "I hate you." The bruises his teeth leave on Mark's shoulder don't fade for weeks.

"I don't hate you," Mark said. Because he didn't. Doesn't. Never will. Eduardo pushed against him with more anger than lust. He jerked Mark off roughly, biting his own lip to keep in whatever else he had wanted to say. Mark didn't ask him for the missing words; he closed his eyes and listened to Eduardo's choked-off sex noises. He remembered those well – the sharp crack of Eduardo hitting his head against the bathroom stall, inches away – Mark's body doesn't care how much has changed since then. Eduardo groaned high in the back of his throat and pressed Mark against the bed.

He wasn't a kid any more. Sean introduced him to women who- anyway he knew there could be more to it than this. Didn't matter. He gasped, "Fuck, Wardo," loud against Eduardo's wordlessness. Must have squeezed too hard because Eduardo made a noise like pain before following Mark over the edge.

Mark left right after, cleaning himself up in a hurry and holding his jacket in front of him as he walked out.

When Mark got back to California the papers were waiting for him. Eduardo really was suing him.

 

*

"Hi," he had said. "Eduardo." He added, "Saverin," belatedly, when it became obvious that he wasn't getting a response. He started lowering his hand at just about the point that Zuckerberg understood, fumbling his hand out of his sweatshirt pocket.

He shook Eduardo's hand. "Hi. Mark."

Eduardo laughed. "Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm told you're going to be the next Bill Gates."

"I actually think I have slightly different aspirations to- oh. Sorry, you just meant that to be a-."

"No," Eduardo said, "go on. Where do you _really_ want to be in ten years?"

Mark had blinked. "You want to know?"

"Sure." Eduardo sat on the edge of the table and watched Mark Zuckerberg pace in front of him talking about the virtues of creative anarchy on the Internet. Eduardo had understood maybe one word in five but he hadn't stopped listening.

 

*

It is going to be midnight in California, and three a.m. in New York. His phone will be trapped between his ear and his shoulder and he will maintain that he didn't mean to call.

The phone will ring on and on, almost comforting, while he waits to see if Eduardo will answer.

The noise will cut off abruptly into breath. Still mostly asleep Eduardo will mumble, "Hello?" Then, suddenly, "Mark?"

 

*

Mark lay back on the bed in one of their rooms and took a breath. He said, "You are, you should know, my best friend."

Eduardo laughed. "Are you drunk? Mark, I thought we discussed coding while intoxicated."

"My drunk coding is better than most people can manage entirely sober. And no, I'm not drunk. It just occurred to me."

"That I was your best friend?"

"That you are, and you say it all the time, although admittedly it's usually prefaced with 'Mark's my best friend and even I think that was asshole-ish' or 'Mark's my best friend, so I'm obliged to put up with this'. Still. The sentiment is there. And I haven't ever said it back."

"Mark, I don't need-."

"It's not that I don't think- I mean, you're my only friend, really, but even if I-. Okay, I have no idea what an appropriate number of friends for an ordinary person would be, but let's say even if I had a million friends…"

"Yeah?"

"You would still be – I can't think of a standard for judging which would stop you being the best one."

It was typically awkward Mark phrasing, but Eduardo had smiled anyway. He said, "I can't say ditto without sounding like a dick but yeah, me too." He poked Mark with his socked-foot. "Even if you can be an asshole sometimes."

 

*

Mark has an email in his account, unsent. It sits there in his drafts, looking at him accusingly.

 _Eduardo. I need you._

It had always been enough, before. Eduardo had always answered, always ready to give more things - different things - than Mark was asking for. He won't answer now, so Mark won't ask.

 

*

Eduardo fell in love with an asshole. And it was okay, it really was, because he knew that going in. Mark was an asshole and he was probably going to, like, eat all of Eduardo's food, or take his CDs without bringing them back, or piss off the small number of women Eduardo managed to convince to date him. He just hadn't predicted that Mark would try to steal thirty percent of a multi-billion dollar company from him. That was unexpected.

He goes to Mark's door this time.

Mark opens the door with his phone in his hand and stares. "Eduardo?"

"Hi."

"I don't know if we're supposed to be-," Mark says, "the lawyers were pretty clear."

"And you're so big on the law now? Anyway, we both know you're going to settle so what does it matter if I…"

"If you what?" Mark asks, "Did you come over here to rub a bit more salt in the wound?"

"Did _I_ …? Mark, for God's sake, I-. I don't get you, sometimes."

"Well that is painfully apparent."

Eduardo sighs. "I don't know why I came over here."

"That's not really something I can help you with."

"Do you know what I wonder, sometimes, Mark? I wonder if maybe I'd been like Erica, if I'd just got on with my life instead of rolling around in the mud with you, maybe you'd have come after me too. Maybe you'd be chasing after me in restaurants with your not-quite apologies begging me to understand. But I think I'm glad I did it this way. You know why?"

"Eduardo."

"Because I don't want to be another thing you feel bad about. I'd rather you got pissed at me for being the asshole who wouldn't die when you stabbed him in the back, who dragged you through this fucking farce of a lawsuit over nineteen thousand dollars and change. Anything rather than turning into another one of those regrets you just can't stop poking to see if it still hurts."

"Wardo, I don't even know what that-."

He sighs. "I know, Mark. I know that you don't." Eduardo closes the door behind him as he leaves.

He doesn't know why he thought that might help. They've said everything that they have left to say to each other over a courtroom table, surrounded by lawyers. He looks at Mark and Mark looks back and Eduardo still has no idea what's going on there. If maybe Mark hasn't changed at all since freshman year, except that instead of trashing his ex-girlfriend on his blog, he's using his site with its millions of users as one big fuck you to the rest of the world. There are things Eduardo would change about the two of them now that didn't matter before. This thing grew so big and spun apart so fast that he still doesn't know how it happened. He watches Mark.

 

*

"Can you _not_ look at me like that?"

"Like what?" Eduardo asks.

"With your… eyes."

Eduardo raises an eyebrow. "Care to rephrase that?"

"You make me feel like a bad person."

"Guilty conscience?"

"Not so much. It's just you and your…"

"Eyes, yes, I gathered. I'll try my best not to look at you."

"That wasn't what I meant," Mark says. Eduardo is smiling with just one corner of his mouth so Mark suspects that he's teasing but sometimes it's nice to be clear. He says, "I didn't mean, I'm sorry if I…"

Eduardo smiles at him properly. "I know, Mark. I know. It's okay."

 

*

"They think it's about money," Eduardo says. "It's not."

"I know that."

"Yes."

"If it was about money, you could have the fucking money. But not because of a lawsuit and not because they make me. If it was just the money, you could have it." Mark says this and Eduardo thinks he probably even believes it. It was never about money for Mark.

"Don't do that," Eduardo says. "It's… you screwed me over. Because of him. And because of California, and because I disagreed with you. And he…"

"It was never about Sean either. It was always about you and me."

"Maybe. I was trying to build a business and you… you were doing something else." Mark had pictures in his head of something 'cool', something that changed the world. Eduardo was an economics major with a strong maths background and none of Mark's coding. He says, "I would have taken the fall with you, if it had all gone wrong. You know that."

"I do."

"So it wasn't-."

"I know, Wardo, okay? I know. What difference does it make now, anyway?"

"I guess it doesn't."

 

*

Eduardo's sports jacket is thrown on the hotel floor and his hair is still wet from the shower. He curls up on the side of the bed with his back to Mark. Mark is staring at the other wall.

It's a big bed, a nicer bed together than either of them could afford apart.

Mark turns onto his back and looks at the ceiling instead. He won't be able to sleep. Eduardo waits a moment then does the same thing. His fingers brush the back of Mark's hand. Mark doesn't know whether or not he meant that to happen.

Eduardo says it. "I missed you."

Mark doesn't say, I missed you too.

 

*

They will keep running into each other. Eduardo retains his interest in Facebook and though Mark gets some of their friends in the split (he is their boss, after all), there is some neutral ground. Eduardo will come back when he stops being angry.

He will open one of the emails Mark didn't mean to send, or answer one of the calls Mark will swear he placed without thinking.

Eduardo will say, "Yes, Mark, I still remember writing the algorithm on your window. What's your second question?"

 

*

"So why did you stay?" Mark asked, desperate, because he really had no idea. If he had been so unhappy, if Mark had _made him_ so unhappy, why did he keep coming back? Why hadn't he taken his money and just _gone?_

Eduardo looked at him, dark eyes open and wet ( _He's screaming, "Mark!", pushing his way through glass_ ). "Because I loved you," he said. "You asshole."

 

*

Someone asks Eduardo what he thinks about the whole thing, afterwards. It's not one of his lawyers. Eduardo doesn't want to talk to any more lawyers, maybe ever. He doesn't want to talk to anyone right now, really, but he has been asked the question and this time deserves an answer.

Eduardo says, "I don't know. With everything that happened after…"

"Yes?"

"I can't detangle all the parts of it. What happened, with everything that happened after."

"You can't get past it."

"I can't… he was my best friend. Before all of the rest. That's the part I can't get past."


End file.
